I thought a thread of tips based on obscure Transcendence trivia might be interesting.

I'll start:

In 1.7, all fuel rod types except uranium have the same value per unit fuel provided, but not all ship reactors are equally efficient. The Nova-100 (which is said to be "popular for its fuel efficiency" in its description) uses I think about 83% as much fuel as most reactors to generate a given number of MW over time, while the 150NX, Koshiba-500, and Erebien TA-50 (in Part II) use about 94% as much.

I believe that the equation is:

(Units of Fuel Used) = 100 * (MW generated)/fuelEfficiency.

Incidentally, uranium fuel rods have considerably less fuel than their value would suggest (and also generate radioactive waste), so unless you're desperate for fuel or need radioactive waste to create an actinide waste cannon from the Tinkers you're much better off selling them than using them.

I think this one is pretty well-known -- all of your equipped items use 10% of their listed power even when not in use. However, you also have a constant "baseline draw" (presumably to power life support) of IIRC 3MW, so keep that in mind when calculating whether or not you can afford to run a new weapon or shield.

Idle powerUse varies. It is 10% for weapons unless specified otherwise. Shields at full strength use half power unless specified otherwise. Enhancers always use full power. Standard armor repair devices, like patcher arm, display power use for two segments repaired at a time. Actual power use varies by number of segments repaired at a time. Then you have things like Novaya repairer, whose powerUse varies by armor type repaired.

Download and Play in 1.8 Beta...Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
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I learned that in a fuel emergency, use 'B', and "shut off everything" - sometimes I make it to a station ..sometimes I don't, but with experience, I rarely don't make it.

some ships are good sources for emergency fuel : like the Earthzone.
The trick to going after a CommonWealth ship for fuel ( without invoking the Wrath of a station or the authorities ) is to be sure they are on orders to 'Gate, but CommonWealth ships are not generally known for carrying fuel in their wrecks.

I remeber the Solar Panels were a huge thing and Solar Armor is always My Favorite as early I can get it...unless I am at or past BA

Flying Irresponsibly In Eridani......

I don't like to kill pirates in cold blood ..I do it.. but I don't like it..

Ideally you shouldn't get into fuel emergencies. Carry at least a small supply of high-level (so it doesn't take much cargo space) fuel with you, and if you have to use it, use the time that it buys you to retreat to a friendly station to buy more fuel. As you get better at combat you should be able to stay stocked on fuel entirely or almost entirely by looting it from the ships and stations you defeat. The big "fuel draws" in the game are typically a) firing weapons, and b) getting hit, forcing your shield to pull power to recharge. Get hit less and kill things faster (which helps you get hit less) and you'll use less fuel.

Speaking of killing things faster, learn how to unlock better Domina powers, and then use them liberally. Defend and Strengthen will, combined, turn you into an invincible double-damage-dealing monster for a short time, hopefully enough to take down a powerful capship that would otherwise be out of reach. Shatter can save your bacon when you get swarmed by lots of fighters (e.g. during parts of the main Corporate Command quest chain). They recharge fast enough that you should be able to use each power 1-3 times per system, depending on how long you linger.

If I honor permadeath, I dislike using Shatter because using it also puts Desperate Escape offline temporarily. Desperate Escape is your amulet of life-saving. Combined with an escape item, Desperate Escape makes honoring permadeath very easy.

Download and Play in 1.8 Beta...Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
Download and Play in 1.7...Star Castle Arcade: Relive classic arcade gaming in a new Transcendence adventure!Playership Drones v7 (Beta): (OUTDATED!) Acquire and command almost any ship in Stars of the Pilgrim or Eternity Port.
Work in progress... Playership Drones v8: Work just started! Details to come later...

It's a balancing act. Shatter can completely shift the tide of a difficult battle that would otherwise require massive resource expenditure to win (such as the last 2-3 Corporate Command missions). If you tried to fight the battle without using Shatter, you might well find yourself having to use Desperate Escape and still not win the fight. Of course, if you use Shatter carelessly, then Desperate Escape won't be available when you need it most.

One decent reflex to cultivate is to just hit 'I' whenever you think you might be in trouble. It switches to bullet time and gives you more time to think about the situation, even if you ultimately just end up cancelling the "invoke power" menu.

Buying limits.
If you sell an number of items to a station it won't buy the same number again. It will only buy if you offer more than it now has in stock.

Example: if you sell 25 titanium ore to a Corp Enclave it will show "not interested in buying titanium ore" if you then try to sell it 10 more tons of ore. But if you try to sell 50 it will buy them. There is a bit of leeway where the number of items offered is near what the station has in stock. This usually shows as a lower price for the items.

Can someone else explain it better, please. There may also have been changes recently that I'm not aware of.

Buying limits.
If you sell an number of items to a station it won't buy the same number again. It will only buy if you offer more than it now has in stock.

This isn't the behavior I've noticed. As I was discussing with PM elsewhere, currently it's more like stations will scale how much they offer for your goods based on how many of the good they already have in stock. E.g. if they have no fuel rods, they'll offer 22 credits per fuel rod, but if they have lots of fuel rods, they'll offer less, until eventually they lose interest in buying more at all. Where this gets weird is that if you sell them a whole bunch of the item all at once (e.g. selling 100 fuel rods in one transaction), they'll pay the "full" price for each item, and in fact will buy more of the item than they otherwise would have. Say for example you might be only able to sell 50 fuel rods normally, and get an average price of 15 credits apiece, if you sold them one at a time. You could instead sell 200 fuel rods all in a single transaction, and they'd buy them all at 22 credits per.

So there's a monetary incentive to only sell items in large bundles, which feels like a bug to me.

I think you're both right. If the player has more of the item than the station, they will always be willing to buy and pay full price. If not, they may still pay full price as long as the number they have is small compared to the typical quantity of the item (numberAppearing). I'm not sure exactly what the ratios are, but above some limit, as the number they have gets larger and/or the number the player has gets to be a smaller fraction of the number they have, the price they offer will go down, until they lose interest in buying altogether.

And I agree this is illogical and bad for gameplay. See this earlier discussion:

In the current system, the price stations are willing to pay for something is reduced if they already have a lot of it, and eventually they won't buy it at all. This is fairly realistic as a short-run economic model, and helps prevent the player from earning too much money by doing the same thing over and over. However, tvr discovered that these limits also depend significantly on how much of the good the player has in their cargo hold. This is so counterintuitive that it was apparently only discovered recently, despite presumably being the case for years.

Also, the amount of a good that can be sold in a single transaction at the current price is limited only by the amount of money the station has on hand and the size of the player's cargo hold. This gives an extra advantage to larger cargo holds, and encourages the player to hoard goods that they might obtain more of in order to sell as much as possible at once, even when it would be more convenient to sell them in multiple batches.

My suggestion is to calculate the quantities at which stations lower their prices mainly as a function of the good's price and type (commodities > armor > devices), and the size of the station's economy (based on its maximum money and/or replenish rate). Then stations should only offer to buy the difference between the quantity they have and the quantity at which they lower their price or stop buying the good. To avoid shifting the game balance too much, the limits should generally be higher than they are now, at least for items with low value to mass ratios.

Buying limits and progressively smaller buyback prices have been present since at least 1.01, possibly earlier. This is why I hoard items and do not sell until I am ready to sell it all in one go. Buying limits vary by item. For weapons, I can sell one, then sell as many as I can carry.

Progressively smaller buyback was (inadvertently?) removed when new dockscreens and commerce code were added recently (in 1.5 or 1.6) and the old code remained only for compatibility (i.e., mods that used older commerce stations code). There is still a limit to what you can sell (if your inventory does not exceed their stock), but at least you are not ripped off selling things few at a time across multiple visits (e.g., 100 credits first visit, 50 credits next visit, 25 later...) I did a quick check on some early game shops in 1.7 and progressively smaller buyback seems to be gone, but there is a possibility some stations may still feature it. (I thought I saw Teratons offer less for more positron cannons when George played during his Eternity Port stream, but I cannot confirm that.)

Progressively smaller buyback killed my first game (in 1.01). Loot sold was not enough to pay for fuel my ship consumed.

If progressively smaller buyback is indeed gone (or mostly gone) in 1.7, I can feel free to sell more earlier and not stockpile as much. I can still stockpile common loot and other items that have more lucrative uses later, to defeat buying limits once or twice, but I do not have to save everything until I can reach or exceed buying limits in one transaction.

One more thing related to commerce: Slave coffins. You may sell a single slave in a single transaction without any chance of getting caught. This means you can sell all of your slaves (up to buying limit) across many transactions, one slave per transaction. Useful after you get all Domina powers and have no interest in feeding the Teraton fabricator.

P.S. Buying limits is another reason I consider cargo hold mandatory for most ships. While more cargo space is great for looting on the spot and/or moving your stash from one base to another, it is great for letting your ship carry more items to sell beyond the buying limit and make more money.

Download and Play in 1.8 Beta...Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
Download and Play in 1.7...Star Castle Arcade: Relive classic arcade gaming in a new Transcendence adventure!Playership Drones v7 (Beta): (OUTDATED!) Acquire and command almost any ship in Stars of the Pilgrim or Eternity Port.
Work in progress... Playership Drones v8: Work just started! Details to come later...